So Suze and I have joined this cooking contest, Whip it Up, right? Just to make sure we excessively dominate each week we decided to start off BIG. GO BIG OR GO HOME. Last night we got together with the spouses and made pasta, like with our hands. And an old timey machine. Filled with mysterious gears.

Making pasta really isn’t hard and only requires a little bit time more time. Although, it’s definitely something to do when you have a bunch of people lying around — you’ll need the extra hands. The end result was light and delicate and really quite good. But onto my WIU submission from the evening:

Arugula (and basil (with walnuts)) pesto

Now, hey. I tripled (and modified) this recipe I found over at Simply Recipes. Since I am awesome I took the extra pesto and put it in an ice cube tray in the freezer. I’LL NEVER HAVE TO COOK DINNER AGAIN. So just be aware, if you are making pesto for a group of people less than an army, you might want to halve or even third the quantities.

• 3 cups basil
• 3 cups arugula
• 1.5 cups grated Parmesan
• 1.5 cups walnuts
• 15 - 20 cloves of garlic (depending on how manly you are)
• 1.5 cups olive oil (of the evoo variety)

Arugula isn’t for everyone. You could easily substitute and go 100% basil. My arugula this week was from my awesome CSA and, for some reason, was pretty pungent and a little bit bitter. So I decided to go halvsies with sweet basil.

First toast the garlic in its peel (aka put the garlic in a pan with a tiny bit of oil on med/med-low) until you feel like the garlic is pretty soft throughout, you don’t want to burn it though. This will help sweeten the pesto and get rid of some of bite from the garlic. I think if you were feeling up to it you could actually roast the garlic in the oven. After that dump the garlic in a bowl and peel it.

Next toast the walnuts. Seriously I don’t think this is necessary. I mean it might be — toasted sesame seeds are like 100x better than non-toasted.  Up to you.

Next get out your big food processor. Suze had one that blew my mind. Put the leaves, walnuts, and garlic into the processor and “pulse” it while you add in the olive oil. Pulse away until you are comfortable with the consistency — it should be nice and thick. Add the cheese and pulse a couple more times and you are done.

I threw some cherry tomatoes on the top which were excellent. I recommend you do the same.

WIU

• Was the recipe easy to follow: yeah definitely. The recipe, as you can see, is really flexible and ripe for adjusting. Also the whole thing took probably 15-20min. Depending on how far you want to go with toasting the various things you could cut 10mins.
• Did the dish taste good: yes. It was a good idea to cut the arugula. The pesto was fantastically peppery so I can only imagine what it would have been like at 100%.
• Would you make it again: sure — but I won’t be making it for a while now that I’ve got loads in my freezer.